1. Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to players for pre-recorded magnetic tape cassettes, and more particularly to a player of this type having a holder attached thereto to receive a transparency slide carrying a facial image of the performer whose voice is recorded, the eyes and mouth of the image being intermittently illuminated by light pulses in synchronism with the reproduced sounds to impart realistic animation to the image in the course of the played-back performance.
2. Status of Prior Art
In a conventional magnetic tape cassette player, when a cassette is inserted in the player, it is engaged by a drive mechanism causing the tape to be drawn across a magnetic pick-up head that yields audio signals that are amplified and reproduced. The typical player of this type is provided with an eject mechanism making it possible to quickly replace one cassette with another. In recent years, such players have been reduced in size and cost by means of microcassettes which are considerably smaller than standard cassettes, yet provide recordings of good quality. The present invention is applicable to both microcassette and cassette players.
Magnetic tape cassette or microcassette players have become popular with children, for pre-recorded cassettes are now available that tell stories intended for a young audience. These often involve familiar characters or personalities, such as Disney-inspired characters such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, or Big Bird and others included in the cast of the Sesame Street educational TV series. And many recordings are available that are made by singers who cater to the tastes of young children. These songs may be based on nursery rhymes or other verses involving ducks, cats or other animals or cartoon characters.
Before the advent of television when the phonograph and radio were the principal sources of home entertainment, children and adults were accustomed, without any sense of deprivation, to listen to a record or broadcast without seeing the performer. The listeners then depended on their imagination to create an image of the performer. But the fact that one could only hear but not see the performer developed in the same listeners a desire to see the performer. To a small degree, this desire is satisfied in the case of phonograph records whose jackets contain a picture of the performer which the listener can look at while hearing the record.
But in this more advanced age of television when being able to see as well as hear a performer is commonplace, children whose conditioning is molded by watching television find it difficult to just listen to a magnetic tape player, for the child wished to see as well as hear the performer. In an attempt to satisfy this need, my prior patent 4,521,205 discloses a three-dimensional character that is united with a pre-recorded magnetic tape cartridge or cassette which plugs into a tape player. The character in my prior patent is provided with eye and mouth openings covered by translucent elements coupled to internal light guides to a common optical inlet. When the cassette is plugged into the player to effect playback, the character is then in an erect position above the player which acts as a stage for the character. In this position, the optical inlet is then in registration with a light outlet whose bulb is energized by the audio output of the player. As the recorded sound is reproduced by a loudspeaker, the light emitted by the bulb is modulated to produce light pulses which are conveyed by the light guides to the eye and mouth elements to impart animation to the character in synchronism with the reproduced sounds.
The practical drawback of my prior patented cassette player, apart from its relative complexity, is that each cassette is united with a three-dimensional character, thereby ruling out the use of ordinary cassettes. Since there are now commercially available hundreds of pre-recorded cassettes intended for children, each carrying a recording of a different character or performer, it would be prohibitively expensive to unite each of these cassettes to a separate three-dimensional character appropriate to the recording.